


i'm miss sugar pink, liquor liquor lips

by theviolonist



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: Character Study, Eating Disorders, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-07
Updated: 2012-11-07
Packaged: 2017-11-18 03:36:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/556460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The problem with Blair Waldorf is, she always wants too much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'm miss sugar pink, liquor liquor lips

The problem with Blair Waldorf is, she always wants too much.

It started when she was three. She asked her mother why she only had one doll, if it didn't feel lonely. It started well, in a way. With Blair Waldorf wanting someone not to be alone. 

But then Eleanor ( _butterfly eyes struck with silver, high feet, swan neck_ ) leant down, took her little girl's hand, and said, "You can have everything you want."

Blair Waldorf changed that day, because she believed – and now she wants what she was promised. 

It's only fair, after all. 

*

It wasn't enough to have Serena ( _golden hair, long legs, short dress_ ) as a best friend: Blair wanted all the girls. It wasn't enough to have one pair of shoes: Blair wanted them all, the highest, the ones she couldn't even walk in. Her lips had to be the reddest, her parties were the craziest; she drank the most expensive champagne and was driven around in the shiniest cars. 

She's not mean, Blair Waldorf; someone just told her she was a princess, and she made the mistake of believing them. 

*

(It wasn't enough to have one dress: she wanted them all, and she wanted to be every model so she could wear them all at once, the make-up juxtaposed and caked, running deep into the trenches of her skin. She didn't care that much about being pretty. It wasn't about looking out. It was about taking in. That's what Blair Waldorf is about.)

*

Blair was fourteen when her dad left. She stood erect in the corridor, thin and willowy and perfect like her mother wanted, full of emptiness with her bones clanking like blinds, and the only thing she could think was, _the pumpkin pie._

The pumpkin pie. Was it that that'd chased him out the house? Blair eating too much of this pumpkin pie, half of it all to herself before she could stop, the fork still jammed between her teeth. 

Her dad came in ( _stiff lips, long eyes, sharp heart_ ). Yelled at her. She'd eaten all the pumpkin pie, he said, how selfish – then the mother. Then it wasn't about the pumpkin pie anymore, at least not when they broke the china vase from the Ming dynasty. It's an unspoken rule in the Waldorf house : you don't break Ming dynasty vases over pumpkin pie. 

But Blair thought, maybe – maybe it was really all about that damn pie. 

Blair was fifteen when her dad left. She watched the elevator doors close on his back, and he didn't look back, but the only thing she could think was, _the pumpkin pie_.

So she went to kitchen. She ate the pie with a fork, one of these little silver forks Blair's grandma gave her parents for their wedding. 

The pie soaked in tears, tart and salted, neat orange smears on the corners of Blair's mouth. 

She ate all of it, this time. Then she went to the bathroom, pushed it all out with her fingers, and flushed it down the drain, the tears, the pumpkin and her father's retreating back. 

*

Here's what you would see, if you were Blair Waldorf: 

the world, a China shop, and on its shelves

(all the boys, with their waistcoats and their smirks, their little fingers and their tumblers of whisky)

(all the girls, with their shiny lips and their slanted glances, their knocking knees and their sequin dresses)

(all the pie – pumpkin, rhubarb, cherry – and the angel cake, a champagne bottle or twenty)

She's there – of course she takes it. It's not like anyone tells her, _no, your stomach will hurt_. 

*

When she was eight, Blair met Nate Archibald ( _blue socks, blue eyes, straw hair_ ). 

She didn't care much for him at first. He was just another of her toys, she took his hand and he watched her, bored and nonchalant, try to explain _The Great Gastby_. 

It's what she always liked about him, in the end. His hooded eyes. The way he never cared for her, not a little, not at all. The emptiness always feels like it's calling for her. 

When she was fifteen, Blair looked at Nate Archibald ( _blue eyes, black hands, sad mouth_ ) for the second time, and watched as he fell in love with her best friend. She wasn't bored, she wasn't nonchalant. 

She understood the impulse, and she knew that you never really got out of loving Serena Van Der Woodsen, so she turned her back. 

She never really gave up on him. That's another problem about Blair Waldorf: she never gives up on anyone. She always wants to have everything forever. 

*

She ate _éclairs_ in her penthouse. Her bedding was anise green. Her eyes were red. She wanted to buy diamonds, so she did. 

*

Chuck Bass struck the clock of her seventeenth birthday. He struck it like he always does, with the ringing single syllables of his name. Chuck. Bass. He's said it enough. 

There's no telling what happened with Chuck Bass. Blair fell into the well, and only when she got out did she realize that it wasn't honey.

*

She ate charlotte with fizzling water in a café in France. She cleaned the petrol out of her feathers, one by one. _My kingdom for a pumpkin pie_ , she thought, but her kingdom was back home, and not worth much. 

*

See, if you want to talk about the many times Blair Waldorf was tricked into believing she could have it all, Dan Humphrey is probably the best story. 

That sums up the whole problem about Dan Humphrey: he's a story.

Not a story like Serena's, not one that flickers and gleams and tells proudly that it's a story. No, Dan is a sneaky story. He creeped up on her with such sweetness, wrapped his nook of commas around her neck so compassionately, she didn't even protest. 

(She didn't even think about picking up Serena's discarded trash, and that's a big deal, because Blair thinks about Serena a lot, all the time. Being better than her, loving her, casting her out. Coming back to her.)

Dan didn't break her heart cleanly. It resisted for a while, then gave a harsh cry of ripping paper, and Blair looked down at her stomach to find every word Dan had ever given her leaking out of her. _All lies_ , she thought she bled them out not to think about the ones that hadn't been lies. 

*

She made pumpkin pie. It didn't taste right – she threw it away after the second bite, went to the _Ritz_ and ordered a steak tartare with pepper sauce, braiséd lamb, crab and red velvet cake. Tricky with painted nails.

*

Blair Waldorf could've been anyone: she could've been a gambler, she could've been a model, she could've been an alcoholic. 

Instead she ended up being Blair Waldorf, heiress extraordinaire, and there's only one thing that defines her: her hunger.

She wants love, she wants glitter and she wants happiness; she wants the cat, the cream, the jar and the milkmaid. She wants the gold, the guns, the boys. She wants mum and dad, the cake and the pumpkin pie. 

_Here I am_ , she thinks every time she kneels in front of the toilet seat in her gleaming white bathroom, as though she was praying. 

Here I am. 

*

(What they forgot to tell Blair Waldorf is this: whether you want too much or too little, you always end up alone.)


End file.
